Why bill C-30 will never work.

There is, rightly, much ado about the internet spying bill C-30 that is currently before the house. A bill so poorly written that the Harper Conservatives have sent it to committee for amendments before it has even reached second reading. There are several moral reasons why the inappropriately named "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act". I say inappropriately named act due to the fact that CSIS has no jurisdiction in dealing with child pornography, but this act allows CSIS the same access as the police. That goes to the bill's deeper purpose, allowing the Harper government to spy on Canadians. However the bill in its current form will never work. Not because of any legal or moral implications or barriers, but solely due to the technical issues of implementation. Any cursory review of the text of the bill show that the people who wrote it have no clue as to how the technology involved works or its limitations.

First the bill basically requires all ISP's to record all data that flows over their networks. Though I haven't seen the stats on the volume of data it is probably safe to assume that it's over the terabyte per day range per ISP. That means the volume of info that has to be stored is 250x the amount of information stored on your average DVD, per day. It won't take long for that amount of information to fill and occupy a large amount of physical space. That physical space will need to be paid for somehow and we all will do that through higher internet bills. This, by the way, is the reason the ISP's are opposing the legislation. It will cost them millions of dollars to implement just the recording provisions, not to mention attempting to safeguard that data from access by criminal elements.

So the expense of storing the information is high, the information can be made useless by the people sending it by the simple expedient of encrypting the data. Modern encryption methods available for free to all of us can lock data up so securely it would take the NSA months/years to crack it. That creates a great expense for the people who want to look at the information as they will need to purchase large amounts of computing power to brute force an attack on the data. If we all start using this encryption it will become next to impossible for the Harper government to afford to crack the data. Once encrypted there's no way of knowing if the information being exchanged is child pornography or Aunt Milly's jam recipes meaning most of it will need to be cracked.

So not only is the internet spying bill a violation of Canadian's privacy rights (section 34 of the bill allows anyone appointed by the Minister to view your private communication), but it will cost the taxpayer millions of dollars for the necessary computing facilities to attempt to break through the current level of cryptography available to the public, not to mention the millions added to internet bills for the storage and security needed for all that data.

In short this is either a very poorly written law or more likely a very thinly veiled attempt by the Harper Conservatives to spy on anyone they see as ideologically impure. Unfortunately with his slight majority Harper will be able to ram this through like he has with all his other poorly conceived and ill-advised legislation. Don't expect many changes in committee.

Concurrent with Obama’s proposed law legalizing and expanding cross-border police integration in North America, Canadians earlier this year discovered introduced (Commons Bill C-30) touted to protect children on the Internet—would also give any Canadian police officer—without a warrant—the power to request Internet service providers turn over customers’ information (see section 17 of C-30); allow Canadian police to seek into Canadians’ private computers. C-30 was strongly opposed by Canadians in April 2012. Canadians further discovered Canada had signed with the United States an array of (Asset Forfeiture Sharing Agreements) for Canada to share Canadian and Americans’ assets civilly or criminally confiscated using Asset Forfeiture laws that result from U.S. and Canada sharing information gleaned from electronic surveillance of Canadian /American Citizens’ communications, e.g., emails, faxes, Internet actively, phone records.

Compare: The Obama Government wants the power (without a warrant) to introduce as evidence in U.S. Civil; Criminal and Administrative prosecutions any phone call record, email or Internet activity. Police can take out of context any innocent—hastily written email, fax or phone call record to allege a crime or violation was committed to cause a person’s arrest, fines and or civil asset forfeiture of their property. There are more than 350 laws/violations that can subject property to Government forfeiture that require only a civil preponderance of evidence.

The U.S. “Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000” (effectively eliminated) the “five year statue of limitations” for Government Civil Asset Forfeiture: the statute now runs five years (from the date) government or a police agency allege they “learned” an asset became subject to forfeiture. It is foreseeable should (no warrant) government electronic surveillance be allowed; police will relentlessly sift through business and Citizens’ (government retained Internet data), emails and phone communications to discover possible criminal or civil violations.

History Repeats: A corrupt or despot U.S. Government/Agency can too easily use no-warrant—(seized emails, Internet data and phone call information) to blackmail Americans, corporations and others in the same manner Hitler used his police state (no warrant) passed laws to extort support for the Nazi fascist government, including getting members of German parliament to pass Hitler’s 1933 Discriminatory Decrees that suspended the Constitutional Freedoms of German Citizens. A Nazi Government threat of Asset Forfeiture of an individual or corporation’s assets was usually sufficient to ensure Nazi support.

Under U.S. federal civil asset forfeiture laws, a person or business need not be charged with a crime for government to forfeit their property. Most U.S. Citizens, property and business owners that defend their assets against Government Civil Asset Forfeiture claim an “innocent owner defense.” This defense can become a criminal prosecution trap for both guilty and innocent property owners. Any fresh denial of guilt made to government when questioned about committing a crime “even when you did not do the crime” may (involuntarily waive) a defendant’s right to assert in their defense—the “Criminal Statute of Limitations” past for prosecution; any fresh denial of guilt even 30 years after a crime was committed may allow U.S. Government prosecutors to use old and new evidence, including information discovered during Civil Asset Forfeiture Proceedings to launch a criminal prosecution. For that reason: many innocent Americans, property and business owners are reluctant to defend their property and businesses against Government Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Annually U.S. Government seizes Billions in assets without filing criminal charges. Increasingly local police are turning their criminal investigations over to Federal Agencies to receive an 80% rebate of forfeited assets. Federal Government is not required to charge anyone with a crime to forfeit property.